Read Charity for Free Online

note.”
    “Well, that sounds all right.”

    The man stepping down from the 4:30 train out of St. Paul was obviously not a homesteader. Nor was he a traveling salesman, teacher, or preacher. His gray suit was too finely tailored, his matching hat and gloves too expensive, his skin too pale, his hands too soft. He was thin, of medium height with sparse sandy hair, and the mien of one accustomed to taking and giving orders, and, having chafed under the taking, now gloats in the giving. The stranger checked into the Koenig Hotel and after inspecting his room, and locking his luggage securely therein, asked for directions to the sheriff’s office.
     
    Dennis Sully was alone, fingering a tin cup of tepid coffee and pondering the fact that he had nothing further to offer the circuit judge in the way of evidence for or against Will Kaiser in the murder of Frederick Kaiser, Sr.
    Dennis never expected to do much as sheriff. He had no inflated ideas about his position as a lawman. He simply wanted a quiet steady life. In Charity, he got it. Mostly, he broke up occasional brawls between the heavy drinking Germans and Poles, and between Indians and whites—again, only the drinkers of either community ever fought—and picked up Will Kaiser three or four times a year and locked him up for a few hours or hauled him home depending on his condition. Dennis suspected that the city council had hired him more to keep up appearances as the county seat than because they had any real need for a sheriff.
    Dennis was not pleased, therefore, to be investigating a murder. Not that he was squeamish. As a young cowboy in Missouri and Nebraska, he had seen a few gunfights. He had fired his own pistol a time or two, though he had never killed anybody and never meant to. Dennis was a crack shot if he had to be. In his younger days he could, on a galloping horse, bring down a deer with one bullet. He never left a duck or goose flapping and gasping for bloody breath. If he couldn’t kill with the first shot, he didn’t fire. And he had seen some heated skirmishes with Indians in their last efforts to save their place on the land. Now, the cattle were fenced in and the cowboys mostly out to pasture, the game was thin, the Indians had lost, and Dennis’ pistol lay in his desk drawer.
    Dennis Sully was forty-two years old and going to fat, but underneath the expanding paunch he still had plenty of grit and gristle. He had never married. He liked his quiet life and the people who surrounded him.
    While Dennis Sully had not had more than a few years of country school, he did have common sense, an easy way with people, and a scalp that itched when he heard a lie. Had he any hair left on the top of his head, it would have stood up as soon as the man who walked through the door that afternoon introduced himself. “Good afternoon, Sheriff. My name is Steven Springer.”
    Not his real name. Hell, thought Dennis , I reckon I don’t have to do much for a man who’s just lied to me.
    Both the front and back doors to the sheriff’s office were left open to encourage a breeze. Will Kaiser, with nothing else to do, was happy to listen to conversations in Dennis’ office. Most talk was about the weather, stock prices, the skyward progress of wheat and corn. Will’s interest was piqued when he heard a strange voice.
    “I am looking for a young woman whom I believe may have taken up residence in or near Charity.”
    Not from around here , Will thought.
    The stranger removed his hat—gray felt that perfectly matched the shade of his suit. He held it with both hands in front of him like a shield to his mid-section.
    “What’s her name?” asked Dennis.
    “Her name is Clarice Madigan.”
    Dennis took a moment after each of the stranger’s answers before asking his next question. “Why you looking for her?”
    “She has taken something that doesn’t belong to her.” Springer had a petulant quality threaded through an apparent arrogance that annoyed the